Captain Donald Hansen with grandson William Treseder, 1985.
First of three parts
Battleland has a pair of interesting posts going up here shortly.
The first was written in 1968 – at the height of the Vietnam war — by Captain Donald Hansen, who flew more than 150 combat missions aboard a B-24 during World War II and the Korean war. The second was written last week by his grandson, William Treseder, who served as a Marine sergeant from 2001 to 2011, with tours to Iraq in 2008, and to Afghanistan in 2010-11.
Treseder called this war hero “Grandpa Don,” the father of his mother, Robin. He was also the guy who’d always buy him Double Western Bacon Cheeseburgers at the local Carl’s Jr. after Treseder’s basketball games, and who flew to watch him graduate from boot camp in San Diego in 2o01, a month before 9/11. It was the final flight his grandparents ever took.
“I believe he wrote it as a response to the declining domestic support for the conflict in Vietnam, and the overall confusion with regard to our strategic objectives,” his grandson says. He was a pilot for American Airlines at the time, flying out of San Francisco. “I think his focus on improving the lot of the average Vietnamese citizen speaks volumes. He didn’t think democracy ipso facto made the world a better place. People’s lives have to improve, otherwise they will seek another system of government — if they are able.”
Treseder wanted both posted as a memorial to his grandfather, who died in 2007 at 86.
“The Greatest Generation understood the power of just convictions, whether a high school graduate like my grandfather or a Ph.D. in economics like former Secretary of State George Shultz,” Treseder says. “Maybe an echo from the past — a ripple from a rock thrown by my grandfather more than 40 years ago — will remind anyone who cares to listen of what we stand for, and why it’s worth the trouble to protect.”
Not to mention worth reading…
Donald Hansen, here.
William Treseder, here.